We now return you to your regularly scheduled Megathread!
Today is July 15th and it’s the first day of the Republican National Convention where Donald J. Trump will be officially nominated as the Republican candidate for President of the United States.
The convention runs Mon-Thur, you can see the calendar of events here:
https://gopconvention2024.com/master-calendar/
For those who have never really watched a convention before, don’t expect a lot on day 1. Generally a lot of speech making and bloviating.
The expectation is Trump will announce his running mate on Tuesday, then more speeches on Wednesday, and the state by state nomination process on Thursday.
Of course, this is all up in the air given the assassination attempt. Nobody has seen a convention this close after an attempt on a candidate’s life, so nobody is 100% sure how it’s all going to go!
I’ll be breaking out each day into it’s own megathread, so if you’re looking for something specific on, say, Wednesday, you don’t have to wade through 2 other days worth of comments to find it!
Bets on Trumps post convention/ Post ass. bump?
Biden and Harris both saw a 6 point bump post conv in 2020. Trumps polling that cycle stayed about the same (his approval then was about the same as Bidens current approval, in the 30s).
Another big one was Gore’s 2000’ bounce. 16 points.
Then of course there is the famous Clinton bounce of upwards of 30 points.
Of course we also have to consider the layer in the current news. Reagan, after the assassination attempt, saw a 20 point bump in approval, which was fairly sustained, for almost 3 months.
Its not unrealistic to think that Trump might walk out of this week into a 15-20, maybe even 25 point bump in approval/ polling after this week. Prior to this weekend, the entire was one of appealing to independents, undecideds, less likely to vote.
Yeah, it’s hard to say. Convention bump + assassination bump, could be a crazy response!
Then the Democratic convention next month has a lot to live up to!
Yeah I think the most difficult aspect of this prediction would be how polarization has impacted the ability for anyone to cross, say, a 45% threshold?
I just don’t think it matters to any likely Democratic voter that Trump improves his image or is gaining sympathy. Likewise, I still don’t think any Trump voter is going to ever go vote for Biden.
Its still all about turnout, which is what the ABWD crowd has never been able to understand: that its not about what they think, its about if people are interested or not interested in showing up the polls. And, interestingly, that kind of information won’t show up in polls of “likely voters”, because the people who are responsible for the departure between polling and elections aren’t likely voters. So its bad enough that Biden is polling as abysmally as he is, but its also an imperfect metric in that it doesn’t predict enthusiasm/ likelihood to actually register and vote.
I have Biden at a less than 5% probability of winning based on my date dependent polling-probability which uses the under/over polling performance metrics from last cycle. I haven’t updated it to Biden’s new, lower polling data, but if people are interested I can get around to it some time this week.